


Tower of Thorns

by theLiterator



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, Ghosts, M/M, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“In a tower of thorns,” John Constantine had said, “True love’s kiss awaits you.”</p>
<p>Dick had memorized the advice, since he had forgotten so much upon dying, knowing that it was his only chance at living again, and knowing that it was the barest chance. He smiled at a merchant girl on the road and she did not smile back.</p>
<p>She could not see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tower of Thorns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Growtear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Growtear/gifts).



> I seem to recall you like fairytale aus? I hope you enjoy, and happy birthday!

“In a tower of thorns,” John Constantine had said, “True love’s kiss awaits you.”

Dick had memorized the advice, since he had forgotten so much upon dying, knowing that it was his only chance at living again, and knowing that it was the barest chance. He smiled at a merchant girl on the road and she did not smile back.

She could not see him.

“You know,” he said to no one, since no one could hear him. “Being dead really, really sucks.”

_In a tower of thorns,_ whispered the wind. He rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to snap back at it: ‘I know!’

The problem with finding a tower of thorns was his inability to communicate with the supernaturally deaf, which happened to be most people. He was _dead_ certain that if there were a literal tower of thorns somewhere, people would know about it, and be willing to gossip about it at length.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a _quest_ if it weren’t a _challenge_.

“I hate you, John Constantine,” Dick said aloud.

“You too, huh?” A woman said, kicking her heels against the back of the merchant’s caravan. “What did he do to you? Steal your girlfriend?”

“What? No!” Dick protested.

“Sorry; did he steal your boyfriend?” she asked.

Dick spluttered. “No! He abandoned me! I’m _dead_ and he abandoned me with some stupid quest.”

“Oh,” she replied. “I thought you were looking a little peaked. I’m Zatanna Zatara, world-famous magician.”

Dick jogged ahead a little to offer her his hand and a grin. “Dick Grayson, uh, dead guy. Not famous though, I don’t think.”

“Sure you are,” Zatanna said.

"Am I?" Dick asked. "I don't remember."

Zatanna shook her head at him. “Now, hop on and tell me about your quest.”

The merchant caravan left them (well, Zatanna,) at the next town because she was talking to the air, and a magician was one thing, but a magician who was actively communing with spirits was another thing entirely.

Zatanna was more than useful, asking the cheery barmaid about the tower of thorns and smiling and nodding when she spoke at length of the League of Shadows instead.

Once she was gone to serve other patrons, Zatanna grimaced. “We should leave, you know. The League of Shadows isn’t anyone we want to mess with, and if you’re looking for a literal tower of thorns, it’s probably not here or someone would have heard of it.”

Dick nodded thoughtfully. “The League of Shadows is honorable in their own way, though,” he said slowly, not knowing how he knew. “And no one ever promised me my tower and my true love wouldn’t be, you know, metaphorical.”

“Maybe it’s like, whoever you make the journey with will end up your true love?” Zatanna suggested. Dick licked his lips.

“That’s a definite possibility,” he said, smiling at her.

They, or, Zatanna really, tagged along with a new caravan, her performing cute little sleight of hand tricks to gain passage, and Dick watching with some amusement from the back of a wagon. The cotton bales didn’t depress with his weight, and he couldn't feel their softness, but Zatanna had certainly appreciated them more than the turnips from earlier.

By noon the next day, they were in the outskirts of Gotham City, a dark, dreary place that was nothing but ancient architecture and the rot of poverty. 

“I’m not staying here,” Zatanna called when Dick slid off the wagon. He shrugged and waved at her; he didn't want to stay either, but he knew, somehow, that he must. She waved back, and Dick walked deeper into the heart of the city, while the caravan ambled slowly around it.

There were far more dead here than Dick would like, he thought, moving through the streets and trying to smile at the people who could see him while at the same time trying _not_ to think about which of them were dead and which of them were simply sensitive.

It took some time, but eventually he came to the sluggishly beating heart of the city, standing in a square bordered by imposing fortresses of the rich who refused to admit that the city was falling apart around them; monuments to past success and present decay.

Tattered remnants of posters fluttered where the glue that had once held them fast was decaying along with the rest of the city, and Dick saw a flash of forgotten color among the faded dark and grey, an image of a trio of acrobats just as long dead as anything else here.

He walked toward the train station, where no one seemed willing to go.

As he neared, he saw that thorns had crawled up the brickwork, a thick, menacing mass, blacker than anything else in Gotham City, which was quite the accomplishment.

“Well,” Dick said. It should have surprised him to find the tower of thorns he sought in this city, the city where he’d died and been reborn and died again (a soul can never forget its deaths). “That’s ominous.”

“You cannot go through,” someone said, and Dick whirled to look at the speaker, a girl with hair like sunshine, out of place in the gloom of the city center where sunshine never came.

“I’m dead,” Dick said. “Who’s going to stop me?”

“Not even the League of Shadows can go through,” she said. “And they’ve been trying for a year and a day.”

Dick raised up his hands and smiled at her. “I’m incorporeal, because I have no body. I’ll be fine.”

She shook her head. “You always were stubborn,” she said. He laughed at that, and offered her his hand.

“You can come with me,” he said. “Maybe your true love will be at the top too.”

“None of us can share the same path, Dick,” she replied. “Besides, my true love is all around me already, and she will never kiss me.”

Dick looked behind her at the wasteland warren of rotting streets, and he nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. Good luck, Batgirl,” he said, the name spooling out from his lips of its own accord.

“Keep it, Dead Robin,” she replied, sending more memory tripping at the edge of his conscience. “You need it more.”

“Who’s up there?” he asked her as she glided away. 

“If you can’t remember on your own,” she called over her shoulder. “Then what use is my telling you?”

Dick was struck with the sudden urge to go with her, to look after her; but he knew, somehow, that he’d never done so in life, and now that they were both dead, what point was there?

He approached the base of the tower and stared at the thorns. He wondered what awaited him at the top, found likely hand holds, and…

Screamed.

Blood bloomed on his palms, bright red spilling down into the street. He took a step back, then another, then turned to run--

_In a tower of thorns_ , whispered the streets of Gotham.

Dick turned back around. He was incorporeal. He would be fine.

He made it to the top with shredded clothes and skin and sinew, and collapsed on the rooftop with only a gray gargoyle for company, breath sobbing out in pain and despair.

“Who are you?” a voice demanded, and Dick struggled to open eyes clenched shut in agony.

“Who are you!?” the voice cried again, and Dick rolled to hands and knees and tried to shake his hair out of his eyes, but couldn’t it was so slicked with blood and the sap of broken thorn vines.

Cold steel pressed against Dick’s throat, and the voice asked a third time: “Who. Are. You?”

Dick looked up the length of the sword, and up a tanned hand with scars brushed palely over it like a safety net, up a long, muscular arm and a black-clad shoulder, and found.

Blue eyes and anger and familiar fear.

“Damian?” he asked, finding the name in his soul but not his memory, which had been shredded to nothing and more than nothing with his death.

“That is not who you are,” Damian replied, sword twitching with annoyance. It passed through the place Dick’s throat would have been if he’d had flesh to carry him, and Damian jerked the sword back in horror.

“No,” Dick said. “It’s who you are.”

“I am no one and nothing,” Damian said. “I am the master of this tower, and I am the ruler of this city. I have no name, and I have no purpose beyond those.”

“Yes you do,” Dick insisted. “You’re _Damian_ , and you’re mine, and I love you.”

He knew that those things were more true than what Damian had said.

“-tt- Don’t be ridiculous, Grayson,” Damian said, and then his eyes widened with surprise.

“Grayson,” Damian repeated, testing the name.

To Dick it sounded like the fading colors of a forgotten poster and the white scars of a safety net. It sounded like home.

“Damian,” he replied, hoping that Damian could hear his home too, because how else could they be true loves?

“Oh,” Damian said, his lips forming the vowel perfectly. “But… but you are _dead_.”

“So were you,” Dick replied, “And now you are not.”

“I don’t remember,” Damian said. “And yet… I do.”

Dick stood up and tangled bloody fingers into the dark hair at the base of Damian’s neck and kissed him until they were both breathless.

“And now I am not,” he said, testing his voice and his tongue and his breath.

“Just like that?” Damian asked. “My father had to build a tower of thorns and cast his body on the pinnacle to bring me back.” He frowned. “I didn’t used to remember that.”

“Just like that,” Dick replied. He remembered the labor of building the tower, of laying the thorns with his blood and his tears. “I remember that too.”

“What does it mean?” Damian asked.

Dick kissed him again, and against his lips, he whispered: “I don’t know.”

Damian laughed and leaned into him, and Dick thought about tearing down the tower of thorns, and thought he’d be glad to to do it.


End file.
